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JAIN JOURNAL: Vol-XXXII, No. 3 January 1998 grammars and polyglot Dictionaries which are landmarks in the history of Inter-Asian Relations.
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The credit of planning and executing Encyclopedias in our modern sense, however goes to our Chinese cousins. In the 1st century A. D. a monumental survey of China's historical memoirs Shih Chi, was given by Ssu-ma Chien, the 'Herodotus of China. In 105 A.D. Ts'ai Lun presented to the Han emperor, his epoch-making discovery-Paper, made of vegetable fibres, which soon replaced the bamboo and wooden slips on which Chinese manuscripts were written. Buddhism had already been welcomed into China and manuscripts, paintings and images travelled from India to China, as beautiful silks were coming out of China along the 'Silk Road' to India and the Roman Orient. While Kumarajiva, (344-43) son of an Indian princess of Kucha (Central Asia) was helping his Chinese colleagues in translating Indian Buddhist texts, Ku Kai-chih (344-406), perfected the technique of figure-painting by fusing the Indian with Chinese designs.
During the glorious epoch of the T'ang emperors (618-907 A.A.), China enriched her art and literature by means of direct contacts with Iranian and Indian civilizations. The celebrated Chinese pilgrim HuenTsang, who spent several years in India, was literally a 'moving Encyclopedia.' For after his return, he worked at the head of a commission of scholars, translating seventy five books in 1335 volumes, creating for the purpose a consistent system for transcription of Sanskrit into Chinese. Another commission of this period prepared the first literary Encyclopedia: I Wen Lei Chu. Emperor Hsuan Tsung (712-756) founded the Academy of Chinese Letters (725), which led to a literary and artistic Renaissance. Some of the best Chinese lyrics were composed by Li Po (705-762) and Tu Fu (712-770). So the most important styles in Chinese landscape painting were created by Li Ssu-Hsun (651-750) and Wang Wei (698-759); such artistic and literary creations were carefully classified and preserved in Encyclopedic surverys. The first historical Encyclopedia, the Tung Tien was compiled (766-801) by Tu U; and special monographs began to be compiled for economic, political and cultural surveys, district by district. In 972 the entire Buddhist canon was printed in Szechuan from 130,000 blocks by Imperial order. Two other great Encyclopedias were compiled by Imperial order: T'ai Ping Yu Lan (977-983) and the Ts'e Fu Yuan Kuei (1005-1013). These are no mean achievements in Inter-Asian Relations a thousand years ago, and we shall be doing bare justice to these great pioneers by publishing, mainly under the collaboration of China and India, a new Encyclopedia Asiana to celebrate the millenary of the Chinese Encyclopedia.
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